Social inequality and homeownership from a comparative perspective: Is there a return of the welfare state?

Abstract

Esping-Andersen’s typology of welfare state regimes has been one of the most influential contributions to comparative studies. The general picture of this typology has four variants: social democratic, conservative, southern European, and liberal regimes. This typology becomes controversial particularly when homeownership inequalities are considered. Our study aims to evaluate the sustainability of the welfare state regime typology with regard to reducing inequalities of homeownership. The paper uses data from the Luxembourg Income Study to analyze the changes in homeownership rates for low-income populations as compared to the entire population. We compared ten countries representing various welfare regimes from 2000 to 2013/16 to examine the variations of homeownership and social inequalities over time. The results show that the distribution of countries seems to have a negative correlation between welfare regimes (according to the Gini index) and homeownership rates. In liberal countries (except Canada) and southern European countries, homeownership rates fell over time. In most of these countries, low-income populations experienced the highest decline in homeownership rates during the observed period.